Excerpt from Publications of the Nebraska State Historical Society, Vol. 20 Between the crude people and material resources of the northwestern plains (and especially of the part called the Nebraska Country), and St. Louis, there was a notable mutuality, a sort of Useless each without the other relationship. That more or less romantic fact is illumined along the serial thread of the story; and while the French founders of St. Louis and their compatriots lacked the genius for the larger enterprise of building a permanent empire of the greater Northwest, beyond the Ohio, which they at first occupied or possessed, but let slip to their British rivals, yet for the rudimentary achievement their temperament was the better fitted. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.